A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  “How are the teachers?” he asked.

  “One is dead,” I said.

  “Shit.” His response came back.

  I used my binoculars to examine the building at the far end of the school grounds. The structure that had just finished construction.

  “I read in the Register that you’re coming here,” I said to Monroe. “To dedicate the new library.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice quieter now.

  I scanned the vinyl banner strung across the front of the library, and my eyes stopped on something etched into the stone above the banner. The governor wasn’t just speaking at the dedication.

  “Your name,” I said, sliding over the Remington so I was ready. “It’s on the building?”

  “That’s not why I’m calling,” Monroe said.

  But it couldn’t be good. The Monroe family name on a building after this? Whatever this was about to become.

  “Mason Falls isn’t known as a place where schools get shot up,” Monroe said. “Those cities become infamous. But you and I can change that, Marsh. In Georgia, we act strong and fast. We protect children.”

  I stared down the barrel through the sights of the Remington, laid out across the roof. Sap drippings smeared across my forearms.

  “What is it you want?” I asked.

  “We can’t wait until this psycho hurts a child,” Monroe said. “Take him out. Now.”

  “SWAT wants time,” I said.

  Monroe’s voice got gruffer. “For Christ sake, you just said he killed a teacher.”

  “They’re running a phone line,” I explained.

  “And next they’ll form a committee,” he said. “Marsh, you owe me one.”

  I exhaled, my nose making a whistling noise. This was what I’d been dreading since I heard Monroe’s voice.

  In May, the governor had supplied me with the name and address of a man who I’d been searching for. A man who’d run my wife and son off the road two years ago. Who’d killed them.

  In exchange for that information, he told me that he’d call at some point—for a no-questions-asked favor. And I’d agreed.

  I stared across at the gunman.

  “I’m not gonna make you do this,” Monroe said, his voice calming again. “But I think every parent in the state would breathe a sigh of relief if you took out that killer.”

  I hesitated.

  I’d read that Monroe was only one point ahead in the polls. One point ahead of an unknown competitor was a narrow margin for an incumbent governor. If a school shooting went bad, he might fall ten points behind.

  “Just know that if you pull that trigger,” he said, “you and I are square. All debts settled.”

  The phone went dead then, and I put my cell down. Focused on the art room.

  The teacher said something to the gunman, and Harrington shook his head at her—vehemently, from left to right.

  He grabbed the teacher by the shoulders then and swiveled her in my direction, staring out the window.

  Had the gunman seen me?

  I stayed completely still. Found Jed Harrington in the center of the Remington’s scope and waited. He held his weapon to the woman’s neck, and I confirmed it was a .38.

  The gunman moved closer to the window, dragging the art teacher in front of him. He was forty yards away. Fifty at most.

  Slowly, I chambered a slug. Found the release lever and pulled back on the action, pumping the gun to the ready.

  The teacher wriggled free from the man’s grasp, and he let her go. Then he glanced out at the forest, his .38 resting against the glass.

  It was a moment of calm. Was he reflecting on something? Still searching for some movement?

  I’d spent the last decade of my life trying to understand the machinations of the criminal mind. Why they take the risks that others don’t. Their carelessness with the things that I hold dear. And the truth was that my understanding hadn’t grown deeper. In the end, they just made me doubt the existence of a higher power.

  My walkie came alive with Remy’s voice.

  “P.T.,” she said, “phone line’s ready to get walked over.”

  I stared at the gunman, my index finger resting against the trigger and then drifting away. Hesitating. Shaking.

  The Remington 870P isn’t a long-distance weapon. It’s a short-stock shotgun that’s great for clearing a house and hard for bad guys to pull out of a cop’s hand. Still, when hunting, I’ve found that a twelve-gauge can be effective to about eighty yards. Twice this distance.

  I eyed the red dot on the Remington and found the gunman.

  Harrington had killed one teacher already.

  And as I watched, he turned back toward the girls and the art teacher, his Smith & Wesson in hand. Held out in their direction.

  Over his shoulder I could see my boss’s daughter, Avis, at the front of the pack. She put out her hand, palm facing him, as if to say no.

  “P.T.,” Remy’s voice chirped.

  I took aim. Inhaled and squeezed.

  2

  Wednesday, September 11, 2:52 p.m.

  A gunshot rang out. And the three seventh-grade girls who’d bunched together in the corner of the art room shrieked.

  “Stay down!” Kelly Borland yelled.

  The art teacher dove across the room and landed atop the girls, her arms pulling them into a clump of hair and tears and uniform blouses.

  Keep the girls safe, Borland thought. That’s your only job right now. Keep them safe.

  The room went silent then, and Kelly Borland’s eyes found Leaf Tanner. “Mr. T” to the kids. “Beloved” is how the thirty-one-year-old science teacher was often described.

  But today, his body lay still against the far wall, his five-foot-ten-inch frame propped up on a pile of painting smocks. The fabric of the smocks was soaked in the same red that coated Tanner’s shirt.

  Kelly Borland glanced down at her hands. A spatter of blood covered her forearms. Hers? One of the girls?

  She looked across the room.

  The gunman who had been threatening them was on the ground. His body, motionless.

  Kelly stood up. Ran her fingers along her blouse and skirt to confirm she wasn’t hurt.

  Then she stumbled over to the window.

  Something moved outside, and she stared through a hole in the glass.

  A snow goose emerged from the trees and lifted its head. Stared at Kelly Borland.

  Was the ordeal over? she wondered.

  Was it over that fast?

  3

  Shooter is down,” I hollered. “I repeat. Shooter is down.”

  The walkie immediately sprung to life.

  “Ten-one-oh-one,” Remy hollered. Asking my status in a way that the media would be slow to follow if they were listening.

  “Ten-one-oh-six,” I answered, letting her know I was safe.

  I used my binoculars to scan the art room. The female teacher was staring out the window, which now had a hole the size of a peach pit in it.

  “Hold your fire,” I said. “Three students and one teacher are clear. Imminent danger occurred, and the shooter is down.”

  “Ten-four,” Remy said.

  I watched as the teacher pushed at the gunman’s body with her high heels. He didn’t move, and she glanced at him funny, as if surveying an animal found hit by a truck on the roadside. She motioned for the girls to get up.

  A moment later, three SWAT officers dressed in black entered the art room. They moved the teacher and the girls out in a single huddled mass, their guns on the dead man at all times.

  I clicked the walkie again. “I discharged,” I said. “So I’m gonna wait here for Fuller.”

  “Copy that,” Remy responded.

  Cornell Fuller was the single police officer who’d worked every Internal Affai
rs case in Mason Falls since I was a rookie detective. He’d recently rebranded his “department” as “Force Investigation Unit,” or F.I.U., and demanded that we all use that acronym now. Most of us refused.

  I sat on the roof for twenty minutes then, waiting for the shakes to leave my body. They didn’t.

  My phone rang, and it was Remy.

  “I just heard what happened from SWAT,” she said. “Jesus, P.T.”

  I recounted how the gunman had grabbed the teacher. “He had a .38 to her neck,” I said. “Dragged her to the window.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “The teacher got loose, and he just stood there for a moment. Then he turned and pointed his gun toward the kids. I took the shot.”

  My partner said nothing, and I watched SWAT move from classroom to classroom, hand-signaling and clearing each area as they searched for additional weapons or explosives.

  “I gotta go,” I said, noticing movement through the trees ahead. “Fuller is coming.”

  I hung up, and the head of Internal Affairs appeared through the hedge.

  “Detective Marsh,” Fuller said.

  “Bird,” I answered.

  People called Fuller “Big Bird” because he has this scruffy patch of wavy blond hair up on the top of his head. He’s unusually skinny, and has a good four inches on me.

  “The cops I see . . . I see often,” Fuller proclaimed in this nasally voice he’s got. The sentence was a reference to him having investigated me before. An investigation I was cleared of.

  I ignored the remark. Pointed to the back of the shed. “You wanna come up here, or do you want me to come down?”

  “I’ll come to you,” he said.

  Fuller scrambled up the same way I did and crouched, the branches all around his shoulders. He took a photograph of me from that angle. Then a wide shot of the whole roof. He lay down prone beside me and shot a photograph of the art room from my vantage point.

  “Your weapon,” he said, gloving up and collecting it.

  “It’s Gattling’s,” I said. Referring to the blue-suiter whose Remington I’d borrowed. “There’s a slug still in there.” I motioned at the weapon, which I’d reloaded.

  Big Bird opened the action and rolled the shotgun over, popping the unused shell from it. He swabbed my hands. “You have binoculars?”

  “My partner’s,” I said. “Not the department’s.”

  He waited, and I produced them. As I did, I thought of the call from Governor Monroe. If Fuller asked for my cell phone, did I have to oblige?

  “I just want to see what you saw,” Fuller said, looking through the binocs. He held on the classroom window for a beat and then handed them back. Bagged the slug from the rooftop and told me to go to the ambulance. Get checked out.

  “And don’t talk to anyone,” he said.

  I climbed down from the shed and walked back to the front of the school, threading my way across the playing field this time, instead of through the forest. The ground was artificial turf, and tiny black beads of rubber had come loose from players’ cleats digging in and were scattered everywhere.

  The adrenaline surged in my system, and the sound of an eastern kingbird chirping in the nearby trees was crisp. My hands shook for what must’ve been five minutes.

  When I got out front, three ambulances were pulled onto the lawn beside the cruisers. I sat on the back lip of one of them, a tech in her twenties running me through a basic exam.

  An EMT walked over, a kit in hand to draw blood.

  “We can do this here or at the hospital,” the guy said. This was standard practice in an officer-involved shooting. My blood would go to toxicology, where they’d examine it for alcohol or drugs. Anything that could’ve impaired my judgment when I took that shot.

  “Here’s fine,” I said, and let him get started.

  Chief Senza walked over during the exam. He had been at a hearing in court and was wearing his formal blues.

  “How you feeling, Marsh?”

  I would go to psych tomorrow. A new requirement in Mason Falls. Two visits minimum when you discharge a firearm in the line of duty.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  Senza was white and had the wide chest of an S.E.C. lineman. Which he was, twenty-five years ago at Auburn. He looked a little piqued, a natural response for a man who’d probably imagined the worst about his daughter thirty minutes earlier.

  “Fuller said not to talk to anyone,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not anyone,” the chief answered. He motioned at the next bus over. “I just spoke with the art teacher, Miss Borland. She said that one minute Harrington had a gun at her throat. The next moment he turned to shoot the kids and was on the ground.”

  I nodded at Senza, because this was true, regardless of what Governor Monroe had asked.

  The boss stared at me. “How this ended,” he said, “with no kids hurt. My family thanks you, Marsh. My ex-wife, who never thanks anyone . . . she already texted to thank you.”

  Before I could respond, Remy came over, along with the other two detectives who handle homicide in Mason Falls: Abe Kaplan and Merle Berry.

  Abe had been my partner before Remy. A no-nonsense cop who was like a brother to me. Merle is Abe’s partner: an older, heavyset guy who needed to retire five years ago. Merle wore a gray suit, and his hair was nuclear white around the temples. A handful of cookie crumbs were stuck to his suit jacket.

  “You okay, podna?” Abe asked, slipping into the diction of his youth from back home in Louisiana.

  I nodded, and Merle hiked up his dress pants with one hand. He glared at the paramedic, who was done with the blood test, holding a stare until the kid walked away.

  Abe had been in the same courtroom as the chief and sported a two-piece suit. He was half Black and half Russian Jew and had broad shoulders and curly hair that grew funny in places.

  Abe glanced at me, Remy, and Merle. “It might not be the perfect time,” he said. “But we’re all here, so can we talk about who’s covering what? With the amount of interviews to do and 911 calls that students made, we’re gonna be stretched pretty thin.”

  “Good idea,” Senza said.

  When I got demoted four months ago, Abe took over the job of setting all of our schedules. He determined who caught what cases. And with only four detectives in homicide, we’d be working sixteen-hour days after an event like this one. That would be even harder with me about to go on leave because of the shooting.

  “Well,” Abe said. “F.I.U.’s not gonna want P.T. working at all right now. But I don’t know how we cover this if he doesn’t. What’s your thoughts, boss?”

  I looked to the chief. Surprised that the idea of me going back to work was even a consideration.

  “You want time off?” Senza asked me.

  I held my right hand down to keep it from shaking. “I can work,” I said.

  “I was guessing you’d say that,” Abe answered.

  He motioned around us. “But you can’t be walking around here after taking that shot, P.T. So I propose Remy and Merle stay on-site. Interview kids and teachers the next couple days. Go through the art room. Track how this guy navigated the campus.”

  “And us?” I said to Abe.

  “P.T. and I will find out where this Harrington guy came from. What he does for a living. Family. Relatives. Military experience. How and why he got here today.”

  Abe looked at the four of us and then around at the mess of ambulances and uniforms.

  “You need more bodies?” Senza asked him.

  “It’d be great to pull one guy from patrol right away,” Abe said. “Help round up witnesses.”

  “What about Gattling?” Remy asked.

  Darren Gattling was a patrolman I’d mentored years ago, the one whose shotgun I’d borrowed. He was smart and mature, good
with people.

  “I’ll talk to patrol about him,” Senza said. “I’ll also get two detectives from robbery to help starting tomorrow.” The boss looked at me and Remy. “But you two are in charge of all the additionals. Abe’s got enough on his plate.”

  Cornell Fuller arrived, and all conversation stopped.

  He stared at me, frustrated that I wasn’t sitting by myself.

  “Staffing discussion,” Abe said by way of explanation.

  Fuller turned to Senza, incredulous.

  “Chief,” Fuller said, “you’re not thinking of having Marsh work right now, are you? He just killed a man. He should be on paid administrative leave.”

  Senza glared at Big Bird. “He didn’t kill a man, Fuller. He killed a killer.”

  “Chief,” Fuller pleaded.

  “We got this shooting, Fuller. And two straggler cases. And I got four detectives in homicide. So if you got budget for another man burning a hole in your pocket—please, let me know.”

  Big Bird looked stumped, and the chief looked from him to me.

  “I gotta talk to the media in fifteen minutes,” Senza said. He pointed at me and Bird. “I advise that you two chat fast—and then P.T. leaves with Abe.”

  Fuller nodded begrudgingly, and Abe said he’d wait for me in the car.

  I walked with Big Bird around to the window outside the back lawn, where I studied the hole the bullet made.

  Through the glass I also saw Harrington, in a pool of blood on the floor inside. Ten feet from him was the teacher, Leaf Tanner, and no one was touching either body until the M.E. got here.

  But a smart uniform had taken a pile of clean art smocks and made a dam of white fabric between the two men, so their blood didn’t comingle, in case the room’s elevation was off.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Bird agreed.

  He gave me an appointment to talk to a shrink first thing the next morning and went back over the details again. What time I got to the school. What made me hike around the back. And why I took the shot.

  He told me a shooting board would convene within a week. To confirm if it was a good kill.